Volver a mirar: análisis de variables que atraviesan las elecciones vocacionales

This work is part of the research project "Evaluation of a retention and permanence strategy in the university system: vocational reorientation: Looking Again Re-Orientation Program". The latter consists of a guidance intervention program for students of the UNLP who need to reconsider decisions made in their careers. It has been carried out by the School of Psychology’s Occupational and Vocational Guidance Centre, from 2012 to the present. Participants attend a specific process of reorientation which consists of weekly group meetings held for a period of 2 months. In order to deal with this project, 133 young people who participated in the Looking Again Program between 2012 and 2017 were taken into account; both the entry forms, prior to meetings, as well as the completion forms, filled in at the end of the process, were taken into consideration in order to collect data. This enabled to reduce variables regarding the selection of courses of study, which they considered should be reviewed, namely reasons for enquiry, courses the consulting students  belonged to, reasons for choosing them and reasons for subsequent dropout. The first results indicate that, among the most frequent reasons for enquiry there is the need to participate in the process to achieve a better choice in the future (23% of cases) and, secondly, the observation that the previous election had not been satisfactory due to the lack of interest in the topics covered in the course in question (20.3%). As regards the courses the consulting students belonged to, great heterogeneity is shown, being the most popular ones the UNLP main university courses with a clear tendency to courses known as or considered “traditional”. For example, the most frequent choices reflected are in the fields of Law (11%), Psychology (8.3%) and Architecture (6.8%), among others. The reasons for choosing those careers respond mostly to the association of these with personal likes and interests (44%). However, the dropout or subsequent reconsideration is due to lack of interest or dislike for the subjects studied o covered (32%) in the first place and, secondly, academic difficulty experienced by young people (15%). As preliminary conclusions, the difficulty for young people to recognize their professional interests prior to the election of the career becomes apparent, making visible the discrepancies once the students start attending the course. On the other hand, it is necessary to review the academic tools with which students enter university life since academic and work difficulties experienced in the course appear as a second reason for dropouts. As regards the reasons for applying to initiate a reorientation process, there is clear correspondence with what has been expressed in the other main ideas, i.e., young people express that they need greater knowledge of their professional interests and personal likes in order to face a better choice in the future. Although a large number of cases have been collected, it is considered necessary, for future research, to expand the analysis of the aforementioned variables in order to determine possible causes to the aforementioned problems for a better future approach that allows their reduction.